April 3, 2022 (Fifth Sunday in Lent)

Synod Discussion:
Deacon John Kerrigan and Thomas Slabon

[This text is an edited transcript.]

Dcn. John: In our Gospel passage, Jesus manifests the glory of God, God’s mercy. Jesus, as a wise and merciful teacher, devises a way to help the woman get out of her situation by challenging the crowd with the question: let the one among you who is without sin throw the first stone. In doing so, he turns the accusers back on themselves, so they can reflect on and realize that they, too, are sinners.

In His parting words to the woman, Jesus demonstrates mercy AND justice, “Neither do I condemn you,” he says to her, “from now on sin no more.”

The Gospel story is a marvelous example of the Yes-And nature of Jesus’s ministry: mercy and justice, freedom and modesty, inner prayerfulness and a call to serve others.

With this notion of Yes-And in mind, we have a wonderful segue into a conversation about the Synodal process that the Catholic community has been going through over these past few months. In order to do that, I’d like to invite Thomas Slabon to come up and to join me in the conversation.

Dcn. John: On behalf of the Catholic community at Stanford, thank you, to you and your student teammates DJ, Jane, Joseph, and the many others who have been involved in all the interviews, data collection and reporting. We are grateful for your leadership.

Why don’t we begin with you telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got to Stanford, and how you got involved in the synodal process?

Thomas: … Which is a terrifying question to be asked in front of several hundred people! I’m a PhD student in the philosophy department here at Stanford. Before that, I did my BA and MA at the University of Toronto, and prior to that, I spent a year as a novice with the Jesuits in Montreal – with apologies to the Dominicans in the room! This year, I’ve been part of the CC@S synodal leadership team. I’ve helped to plan and facilitate the listening circles that many of you hopefully participated in last quarter, and I’m hoping to plan further initiatives for the spring and going forward to next year.

Dcn. John: For those who missed Father Dominic’s memo on the synodal process, would you give us a thumbnail of what synodality is specifically, and how it pertains to the Catholic community at Sanford?

Thomas: Sure! Pope Francis has repeatedly emphasized that synodality is a process of listening to the Holy Spirit speaking through the Church, to the Church as a whole. Francis has talked about the Synod as calling us to be a Church that really listens, a Church that allows herself to be questioned by the experiences of those she meets, and a Church that recognizes she doesn’t always have ready-made answers to those questions. And he’s also repeatedly emphasized that all the baptized are called to participate in the Senate: the poor, the homeless, those at the margins of our society and very often at the margins of our Church.

But it isn’t like this is a new way of being church, something that Pope Francis has conjured up out of whole cloth! We see it put into practice in Jesus’ way of acting in the Gospel today. I’ve always thought that as Jesus is bending over, drawing in the sand, and listening to people, He isn’t just off daydreaming or something of the sort. He’s listening to the voices of those around him. And he’s trying to discern where and how God is speaking through those voices. And in particular, he’s listening to the voice of that woman at the margins of her society, whom Jesus puts at the center of his conversation. And that’s just the vision of synodality that Pope Francis has been preaching to us.

Dcn. John: Well put! I’m reminded by your description of synodality of Pope St. John XXIII, who in thinking about the Church of the third millennium, said it must serve as the medicine of mercy rather than in a spirit of severity. I think this is especially important in this post-COVID era. The pandemic had a lingering negative effect on so many people’s lives, from their educational experience, their economic well being, and overall mental health.

Can you tell us a little bit about the synodality process here at the Catholic Community so far?

Thomas: So far, over the last quarter and a half, we’ve had 19 listening circles involving undergrads, grads, permanent community members, and the student members of our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. We also had an online survey that had over 60 respondents, which means that we’ve heard from over 196 distinct voices that are members of the Catholic community. This has allowed the synodal leadership team to produce a synthesis of the discussions so far. This synthesis is going to be sent to the diocese and to Rome—and it’s also going to be available for all of you to read after Mass today. But more on that later.

Dcn. John: One of the things that was emphasized by some in the listening sessions was that we’re not just listening to each other, we’re also discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit. Is that fair?

Thomas: Definitely.

Dcn. John: What are some of the key themes that have emerged—what have been some of the key takeaways from those many conversations and listening sessions?

Thomas: One of the really important lessons that the synodal team has kept talking about (because we’re so excited about it!) is the diversity of perspectives that we’ve seen. I don’t know if you’ve all realized this, but the Catholic Community at Stanford welcomes members from every corner of the universal Church, and it’s been humbling to see people sharing their unique cares, worries, joys and dreams about the Church.

Just to give you a sample, we’ve heard people speaking about: on the one hand, the joys of our small faith groups and our liturgical gatherings, while others shared how easy it was to come to Mass and leave without ever once talking to another person. Many spoke of their hope to see women ordained as priests, while others were scandalized by the very idea of ordained women. Some worried that our church was being too accommodating of contemporary social trends, while others thought that the church needed to be more open and inclusive in its engagement with the modern world. People spoke repeatedly about the pain caused by the scandals of clerical sexual abuse and the historical harms caused by the church towards indigenous communities. And many wanted to see the church doing more to grapple with poverty, racism, environmental justice, homelessness, immigration… and the list goes on.

The Catholic Community at Stanford is a big church. One key takeaway for the synodal team has been that in the midst of all of these diverse perspectives, even when these perspectives seem to be at loggerheads with each other, they all come from the same place. Everybody’s starting from a love for the Church and for our fellow human beings, and from a desire to authentically live out the message of the gospel and share it with the world. There’s no debate about that. The debate was about how to live out the Gospel message, but we always start from a profound sense of a shared desire for unity.

We were also struck by just how much energy and enthusiasm there is in the CC@S about this synodal process. We heard over and over again from people about how excited they were to participate in the synodal process. At several points during our listening circles, people stood up and declared that they felt like they had been listened to in a way that they’d never been listened to by the Church before. That’s powerful stuff. And I think they’re right—the current Synod on Synodality is something we haven’t seen as an institutional church before, which makes it all the more exciting.

Finally, it’s been really humbling for me to see what happens when we take Francis’s call seriously and listen to the wide array of voices in our church, especially those we’re not disposed to turn to for theological advice.

So just one anecdote, if I may. After the first listening circles and the first round of survey responses were collated, I was reading through all of the responses to one of the questions we had posed: “What current challenges, issues and needs should the Church focus on now?” People were talking about the sexual abuse crisis, the culture wars, clericalism divisions within the Church… and don’t get me wrong! Those are all really important issues. But at the very end of the list, after going through pages of these responses, I found a report from Father Xavier’s listening circle with the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd students. And those students said that the Church needed to focus on—and I’ll just read the list: helping people with mental challenges who are marginalized, helping prisoners to rehabilitate and reintegrate, working to improve facilities for the disabled, addressing the issue of poverty and income inequality, working with gangs and homeless persons, and making Mass more available to youth, not just ‘mature adults and little kids.’ And after I read that I found myself thinking: these kids—these high school students—they get it! They really get it! And we need to listen to their voices.

Dcn. John: What insightful observations by those high school students. Thank you.

It’s interesting —in the spirit of the gospel, with its Yes-And theme, some of the examples you mentioned remind me of the words of Saint Augustine: “In essentials, unity, in nonessentials, liberty, in all things, charity.” Yes-to-diversity, And-to-cohesion.

I also recall from reading through the notes that people talked about the Church being in but not of the world—and living with that tension, the Yes-And tension between setting ourselves apart, but also being concerned with, being in the game of people’s lives and struggles.

Thomas: Totally.

Dcn. John: A last question, where to from here?

Thomas: The next step from here is to take a look at the synthesis that’s going to be available after Mass. Greeters at the exits of the church will be handing out QR codes (like this!) and I’d encourage you to take it home, open up the document, read it, and prayerfully listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking through the voices of your fellow parishioners here at the CC@S.

We’re also now beginning Phase Two of the Catholic community’s synodal journey, which will involve both an inward-facing and an outward-facing dimension. For the inward-facing dimension, we’re going to have focused discussion groups with the permanent community members, grad students and undergrad members of the community (beginning at the end of April) to discuss the CC@S’s liturgical life, social life, and our works of evangelization and social justice. And then from there, we’re going to be forming community working groups to start implementing the ideas and the dreams that people share in these discussions.

On the outward-facing side, we’re going to be organizing times of open dialogue with various faith and cultural communities on campus, to listen to their perspectives on the Church. And we’re also currently brainstorming ways to reach out to those baptized Catholics that are part of the Stanford community but have never yet stepped foot in MemChu. We’re hoping that all of you here today will be part of those conversations as well.

I think it’s really important to remember that synodality isn’t a time-bound activity. What we’ve lived together over the last couple of months is merely the first step of an ongoing transformational journey that we’re embarking on together as a parish, and as a Church. So I’d invite you all to come talk to members of the synodal leadership team who will be at the back of the church after mass. Come talk to us if you want to hear more, if you’re interested in getting involved in the process… or if you just want some of the cheese and crackers that we’ll be distributing after mass as well.

Dcn. John: If I were to pull a few strands out of what you’ve shared, they would be: the word evangelical, sharing the good news of the Gospel with people; second would be our sacramental life, which we experienced primarily through the liturgy each week; third would be the sense of justice, of serving other people. And threaded through it all, there really is an undercurrent of mutual respect, even if people are coming at it from very, very different angles. Finally, that this is again not simply talking with each other but discerning the spirit—as Paul mentioned in today’s second reading, being consumed with and becoming Christ-like.

Thomas, thank you again for all your work in this process, and hearty thanks to all those involved in the Synod on Synodality here at Stanford. We’re very excited about the next stage.